Natasha Khan returns with her sixth studio LP and first for five years, a quirky, swirling experimental release capturing up the early days of her motherhood to daughter Delphi, born in 2020 during the pandemic, and using folkloric, electronica keyboard improvisational approach sometimes with vocals of semi-formed words. It’s an unusual songwriting approached, embryonic, and apparently created quickly within the studio during that tumultuous period of uncertainty and change. Khan describes the opening title track as “like a spell being cast. It’s the conjuring, the manifestation, the drawing-down of Delphi from the ether. This is me calling on her soul.” She partly tells this whole story through a character called the Motherwitch. The overall effect is a slightly otherworldly, sketchy concept album with a variety of piano and synths, flute-like effects, whispering voices, but certainly capturing the surreal uncertainty of first-time motherhood in this indulgent love letter to her child. Letter To My Daughter has rippling synths, Home captures a deep throbbing heartbeat within heavy vocal effects. Breaking Up charts the split with her partner and Delphi’s dad, but channels Bowie-esque saxophones and echoes of Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence in a private appreciative nod to his favourite music. Delphi Dancing a joyous, dreamlike organ swirl, and closing track Waking Up is a dream-like fusion of synth arpeggios and soaring vocals, while At Your Feet is a gentle, meandering piano and synth piece with high vocal harmonies sem-pronounced words, and even more so on The Midwives Have Left, a slow piece of vocal oohs and gentle drones. Overall a very personal release about a strangely joyous, yet bewildering period in her life, perhaps more of a musical sketchbook than a fully formed collection of songs, but nevertheless enjoyable in a flowing, floating, ethereal form. Out on Mercury KX/ Universal.
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